U.S. Aircraft Portable-Missile Defense May Cost $43 Billion

By Angela Greiling Keane -
Jul 2, 2010

Arming U.S. passenger aircraft to
deter shoulder-fired missiles may cost $43.3 billion over 20
years, the Homeland Security Department says in an unpublished
report that may reignite debate about the vulnerability of
planes to terrorists.

The missiles “could easily be smuggled into an airport in
a western country,” said Matt Schroeder, manager of the arms-
sales project of the Federation of American Scientists, which
calls the portable weapons “an imminent and acute threat” to
airliners. The Washington group disclosed the report after
obtaining it through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The analysis was requested by Congress following the
introduction of legislation in 2003 by Democratic Senators
Charles Schumer of New York and Barbara Boxer of California that
would have required defense systems on U.S. passenger planes.
The lawmakers acted a few months after missiles were fired at an
Israeli passenger plane in Kenya.

The proposed legislation stalled in disputes over the cost
and reliability of the defense equipment. Since then, the BAE
and Northrop systems have been tested for live fire and multiple
missile attacks during more than 16,000 flight hours on AMR
Corp.’s American Airlines’ planes and FedEx Corp.’s cargo jets
by Homeland Security officials, who declare the technology
effective in the report.

The systems foil attacks by using lasers to deflect heat-
seeking missiles.

$12 Million a Plane

The $43.3 billion estimate is based on installing,
operating and maintaining the defense systems on all large
passenger planes, which the report defines as wide-body aircraft
and narrow-body planes the size of the Boeing 737 and Airbus
A318 and larger. The cost equals almost $12 million over 20
years for each plane, based on 3,636 aircraft as of 2008.

John Verrico, a spokesman for the Homeland Security
Department’s Science and Technology Directorate, confirmed the
report’s authenticity in a phone call yesterday.

An attack on a U.S. passenger plane by a shoulder-fired
missile would have an economic cost of more than $15 billion,
assuming it led to a week-long shutdown of airspace, according
to a 2005 report by the Rand Corp., a policy research group
based in Santa Monica, California.

The risk of an attack outside a combat zone may be too
small to justify the cost of the added protection, said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association,
which represents airlines including Delta Air Lines Inc.,
American and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines.

Airline Opposition

“We don’t support the installation” of the systems,
Castelveter said in an interview. “They represent only one
possible deterrent of a number of ways in which to attack
Americans.”

If Congress required equipping airplanes with a defense
system, the Washington-based airline association would want the
U.S. to pay all costs, including maintenance, Castelveter said.

The Transportation Security Administration canceled Delta’s
plan for flights to Kenya and Liberia a year ago, citing the
threat of shoulder-fired missiles, the Homeland Security
Department’s Science and Technology Directorate said in the
report dated March 30.

In November 2002, terrorists linked to al-Qaeda fired at
and missed an Israeli jet talking off from Mombasa, Kenya. The
next year, a missile struck a DHL International cargo plane
taking off from Baghdad’s airport, wrecking the plane while the
crew survived.

The missiles are five-feet (1.52 meters) long, weigh 35
pounds (15.9 kilograms), and could easily be smuggled into the
U.S., said Schroeder of the Federation of American Scientists,
which also works against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Black-Market Missiles

“Just because attacks have occurred in war zones or near
war zones thus far doesn’t mean that will be the case in the
future,” he said in an interview.

Russia and China have developed missiles that the BAE and
Northrop technology would combat, while Iran, North Korea and
Eritrea are among countries that traffic in the weapons,
Schroeder said.

“The values for black-market missiles range from about
$500 to about $250,000,” he said.

The technology for passenger planes is prone to breakdowns,
and a lack of reliability may delay flights or result in
cancellations unless airlines are permitted to defer
maintenance, the Homeland Security Department says in the
report.

Reliability Tests

The BAE and Northrop systems “currently fall short” of
reliability requirements measuring their “ability to perform as
designed in the operational environment without any failures,”
the report finds. “This shortfall results in increased spares
and maintenance costs.”

Doubling reliability would reduce the $43 billion cost of
the systems by $10 billion over 20 years, according to the
report.

The findings on reliability and maintenance are based on
tests completed in 2007, Jack Pledger, spokesman for Los
Angeles-based Northrop, said in an interview.

Since then, Northrop has upgraded its system, called
Guardian, producing 1,750 units now installed on 500 planes
among 50 different types of aircraft in the U.S. Air Force fleet
and those of U.S. allies, Pledger said.

“All those concerns about reliability have been
addressed,” he said.

BAE, based in London, said it has a maintenance system to
reduce the upkeep costs of its technology.

BAE’s Jeteye system completed more than 2,000 hours of
flight tests without failure on American Airlines flights from
New York to Los Angeles, Program Director Burt Keirstead said in
an e-mailed statement.